1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automotive door window regulator and a method for mounting the regulator to an automotive door.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In order to clarify the task of the present invention, one conventional automotive door window regulator disclosed in Japanese Patent First Provisional Publication No. 59-153617 will be described in the following.
The regulator of the publication comprises vertical guide rails adapted to be mounted in a middle portion of a door proper. A carrier plate is slidably guided by the guide rails. A glass pane has at its lower edge a glass pane holder bolted to the carrier plate. A cable winder is located near the guide rails. Pull-up and pull-down drive cables from the cable winder are arranged to surround the guide rails and fixed at their leading ends to the carrier plate. Thus, when the cable winder is operated to drive the pull-up and pull-down drive cables, the carrier plate is moved upward or downward together with the glass plane along the vertical guide rails.
In order to mount the window regulator to the door, the following steps have been taken.
The guide rails, carrier plate and cable winder are mounted on a sub-panel. The sub-panel is then mounted to an inner panel of the door in a manner to cover a large-sized aperture which has been previously formed in the inner panel. The glass pane is then inserted into the door through a slit defined between the inner and outer panels of the door and bolted at its lower end to the carrier plate through the glass pane holder. The bolting of the glass pane to the carrier plate is carried out by inserting an operating tool into the door through a small working aperture formed in the sub-panel.
However the above-mentioned door window regulator has the following drawbacks due to its inherent construction.
First, since the essential parts of the window regulator are located at the generally middle portion of the door in a manner to overlap each other, the thickness of the door is inevitably increased, particularly at the middle portion of the door. This makes difficult or at least troublesome to provide the door with a sufficiently large inside recess which, when the door is closed, faces the interior of the vehicle. In fact, the doors of modern cars tend to have an inside board recessed for providing a pocket or the like.
Second, the work for mounting the heavy glass pane to the door is very difficult. That is, as is described hereinabove, for the assembly, the glass pane is inserted into the door through the slit between the inner and outer panels of the door and then the glass pane is bolted to the carrier plate with an aid of the operating tool passed through the small working aperture of the sub-panel. In fact, the operator has to work blindly to couple the glass pane with the carrier. Obviously, this is very troublesome and difficult.